Retaliation
by heatqueen
Summary: When Galinda finds herself in a predicament, she retaliates with what's supposed to be a simple deception, but ends up with some unexpected consequences. Dyslexic Galinda. Fake Gelphie. Multi-chapter.
1. Chapter 1

**Retaliation**

 _~ A 'Wicked' Fanfiction ~_

 _~ By Heatqueen ~_

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

I didn't understand the power of words back then. How a single spoken word could dictate a situation. How words had hidden meanings and contexts. How a single word could change everything, or how more words spoken meant less words listened to.

Some people are writers, and some people are talkers. Elphaba was a writer, and I was – and still am – a talker. It's just that now I've learned only to speak when the words are meaningful. Back then, some might have said I valued form over content. Long strings of acutely decorated phrases spilled effortlessly from my lips, but in truth, there was nothing of worth to be found in them.

Words had their uses. They could dictate or command a situation, change opinions and create perceptions. They spun tales favourably or otherwise for the sake of advantageous gain. And advantageous gain was a thing I sought constantly from the moment I arrived at Shiz University. Insecure and naïve, I was desperate to be popular.

Let's consider my arrival at Shiz as the start of the story. It was pre-empted by a series of forewords carefully placed by my elders in the form of disclosures to only the most important and wealthy Gillikinese families that I was to attend the university. They were exaggerated to give the appearance of wealth and good breeding. In fact, I was a country girl who excelled in the art of illusion. Anyone with good fashion sense knows that a well-placed accessory can turn an ordinary outfit expensive.

Thus I arrived in a carefully selected outfit of whites and beiges, designed to present an air of sophistication, and thoroughly practiced speech to match. It was easy to drown the mild country accent in a wide vocabulary and deeply knowledgeable conversation. In reality, what I believed to be deep knowledge could easily be spotted by anyone with the vaguest sense of academia as being nothing more than pretentiousness. As it turns out, there was one person with their head so screwed on that their cleverness almost passed with an air of righteousness; and it came in the form of the most unexpected sort of being imaginable.

Picture this – I was standing among a crowd of fresh faced students making polite conversation and ensuring that people only looked at me from my preferred angle, and all of a sudden my vision was marred with an image so completely bizarre that I thought I was seeing things. Among the renowned faces I'd long recognised the famous Nessarose of the Thropp bloodline, but it isn't she who'd taken my attention. Standing by her wheelchair there was another girl who looked not nearly as pretty and more severe. She stood astutely with a glower on her face and one hand firmly gripping the handle of the chair. I thought it was merely a bad trick of the sunlight that painted her face and hands the most garish shade of green I'd ever seen, but even blinking a few times did not dispel the illusion.

If I am the main character of the story, then let's call Elphaba Thropp the antagonist. I was soon to learn that she was too quick-witted for words. She was the one girl who would out-do me in any verbal battle (And I have won a lot of those). In hindsight, it was my fault for making her the enemy, but at the time, she was the perfect target. So different from everyone else, with a vicious temper and freakish bursts of magic, she was the perfect person on whom I could turn the focus. See, I wanted the best of both worlds: I was desperate to hog the limelight, but keeping everyone's eyes elsewhere meant that they would be too distracted to figure out my secret.

It was the perfect plan – and it fell through completely.

* * *

If there is any one way to bring people together, it is to unite them against a cause. The cause was to despise Elphaba, and as Elphaba's roommate, I became the leader. When I look back, I did many cruel things, but she did not make it easy for herself. So quick to buy into every piece of bait I laid out for her, she talked herself into a deep hole in which she became seen as little more than a bad-tempered witchy sort of girl. Her status, which should have been a great asset, did her no favours, not when she had a beautiful and elegant sister snatching at scraps of sympathy for being related to her.

Nessarose was considerably milder than her sister. She went from moments of curt sensibility to genuine sweetness, and even mild defence of Elphaba's behaviour. Torn between her reputation and Elphaba, she played a careful juggling act, reprimanding Elphaba just enough to remain favourable but not really retaliating. In her free time, she prayed to the Unnamed God, a trait that most found weird but never said anything about.

She picked up a boyfriend, Boq, who's name I could never pronounce at the time. I was too airheaded to bother with the names of those who were unimportant. He was a lowly Munchkin boy with such little height that Nessarose dominated him from her wheelchair. He was plain, but Nessarose adored him above anyone else in the university. It's just unfortunate for her that he did not feel the same. Everyone except Nessarose knew that the girl he really wanted was me.

Nessarose could be opinionated when it struck her. She frequently disagreed with Elphaba's attitude towards religion, a matter that occasionally became public knowledge. She often prayed for the Unnamed God to forgive Elphaba's sins. Elphaba insisted that she couldn't be rescued because she didn't have a soul, not that it mattered because there was no way she would let anyone else, let alone a fictional being, dictate her actions.

Elphaba's stubborn disposition was the early cause of our frequent arguments. To my immense frustration, she was the sole person who would not buy into my beautifully constructed good-girl performance. My efforts were met with cutthroat retorts that dug at the holes in my deception, exposing them in plain sight. There was no winning when my cold statements about her appearance were met with wicked reality checks about how Animals were murdered for the sake of my Fox fur coat, or that the labourers who sewed my dresses were underpaid. To her, I was little more than a rich, ignorant brat, and no amount of 'goodness' was going to change that.

Unable to bear it, I slid into an offensive stance, using attack as a form of my defence, ensuring that I did everything I could to influence the other students as much as possible. Hundreds versus one, there was no way she could win. If she was a monster, the student body were swarms of enemies out to get her. Not one corridor wasn't filled with a potential hazard, whether it was as little as a cold stare, or as much as physical violence. Somewhere within it all, a rumour started up. Hit the green girl with water, and she'll burn. A ridiculous idea, but one that took. It only takes a small seed to give birth to an entire concept. And indeed, Elphaba did seem to dislike water. Perhaps it's only that I was looking for something to be different, but she always flinched whenever there was water nearby.

I could make neither head nor tail of it. Elphaba had to shower, right? When I thought about it, I didn't think I'd ever seen her shower, but it's not as if I could just walk into the bathroom and demand to watch her bathe. Whatever the case, the presence of the rumour meant that all the whispers were about her, and my secret continued to remain a secret.

But all it takes is one slip of the tongue – one misspoken sentence; one rash statement during a moment of loss of temper. For all the careful construction I had done, my young and foolish self then went and ripped a gigantic, gaping hole in her own glorified persona. Actions lead to consequences, and my fear of the consequences led to further rash actions; and thus the cycle continued until I was entangled in a web of consequences from which I could not escape. It was this that led to the revelation of my secret, and the events that surrounded it. In fact, if I'd been truthful from the start, the whole mess could have been avoided – but one only ever realises these things in hindsight.

* * *

The only way in which I can describe my initial feelings towards Elphaba is Unadulterated Loathing. From her looks to her clothes to her wicked tongue, there was nothing to like about her. Living in the same room as her was an easy shortcut to sympathy and kindness as people wondered how in Lurline's name I managed to put up with her. I lapped it all up, letting it play up to my 'good girl' image. 'You're so good, putting up with the green bean!' they'd all gush, whenever something terrible happened.

And loathing was a word I frequently threw at Elphaba, whenever I was lost for a response to one of her quick-witted derisions. 'I _loathe_ you!' I declared on multiple occasions, only to be responded to with a loud and ugly cackle. The girl just didn't care. On the other hand, I cared very badly (though I denied it vehemently at the time).

The day that everything fell to pieces, we were in the middle of a heated argument. Oz only knows how it started, but by this point it had, as usual, degenerated into careless, insensitive throwaway statements designed to do little more than pick at each other. So determined she was to shriek me into submission, that my ears would surely sustain damage if this continued much longer. Thoroughly irate with the situation, I let slip a string of words that I instantly came to regret.

'I will write to my parents and tell them how horrendible you are!'

Ordinary as those words seem, I instantly had to choke back regret. Now that I'd spoken them, I'd have no choice to follow through, else Elphaba would win. For most, this wouldn't have been a problem. Just write a letter and be done with it. But most people didn't get a horrendous headache from reading. Most people didn't see letters spinning around uncontrollably on a page. Most people didn't continuously get their b's and d's backwards.

There was no way I could let Elphaba see me write.

Worse, Elphaba had gone into full put-down mode. 'Tattling to _Momsie_ and _Popsicle_ because you can't fight your own battles?' she quipped. 'You are all hot air and no action, my pretty.'

'Just you wait and see!'

The trouble with Elphaba is that her comments frequently left me on the verge of tears, a fact that I hated and couldn't seem to control. Exhausted from our heated spar, I shut myself into the bathroom and squinted my eyes shut so that there was nothing to be seen or heard except darkness. Stupid Elphaba Thropp had probably gone straight back to her reading and forgotten all about it, but I never could let it go as easily. Spoiled as I was at the time, I'd never been criticised much before meeting Elphaba, and was having a hard time handling it.

Of course, she was the one person who would know if I was faking it. With a razor-sharp mind and the ability to analyse a situation, she would easily figure it out, which would only serve for her to mock me further. There was no choice in the matter. It would have to be done. But how could I write a letter without actually writing one?

It's at this point that I should have admitted defeat. If I'd been a better person, I'd have apologised to Elphaba for all the tasteless, cruel things I ever said to her. Maybe I'd even tell her my secret. But alas – I was neither mature nor selfless; I saw nothing more than an unrelenting desire to triumph over Elphaba. Winning would be the ultimate success in terms of my reputation. Take down Elphaba, and be the best, most wonderful girl in the entire university. Bask in the glory and worship of the rest of the student body. Never mind the feelings of the green girl; she was hateful, so they were irrelevant.

Instead of admitting defeat, I created another deception. I should have known that creating another lie within an already dishonest life would be tricky to uphold. The more you manipulate, the less control you have over each lie that you tell. One wrong move and it's all over.

I made the wrong move.


	2. Chapter 2

**(A/N: Updated 05/02/2017 for consistency.)**

 **Chapter 2**

Elphaba's temper was not the only reason why I hated her. There were so many reasons, but among them was the simple, basic fact that she got something I couldn't have. Born into a pampered lifestyle, I was used to being given what I wanted, but for the first time in my life, I failed to get my way.

Beyond the fact that it was she of all people who I lost to, it just had to be a matter that was incredibly dear to my heart. Sorcery was a career I'd aspired to for years, and now I found myself in the situation of being denied it, while the horrid green girl got served magic on a plate. It seemed wrong that she was rewarded for that one vicious outburst at the beginning of the year, while I was denied the chance of pursuing the dream I'd cherished since I was a child. While she got to practice magic, I got to re-do poorly written essays, a fact that was clearly ridiculous when I knew my real aptitude lay in the more practical subjects.

Okay, so the few times I attempted to cast a spell left much to be desired, but to this day I'm still how unsure how I could be expected to know anything without anyone to teach me. With no access to the classes, and a frosty relationship with the Crage Hall library, my only source of knowledge came (to my infuriation) from the green girl herself.

Her sort of magic was unlike anything I'd seen before. Beyond the typical parlour tricks, it consisted of some frightening occurrences, usually in the heat of an argument, where shelves would shake or books would float in the air. She didn't seem aware of this until someone pointed it out, at which point she would freeze on the spot as if the magic was an evil entity out to get her, and flee hurriedly. These were the only times I ever gained the upper hand.

I was unsure how such a thing could be equated to a talent. What, I wondered, was the good in magic if it only served to cause disruption?

Elphaba's outbursts smoothly tied into the horrific image I'd created. The student body was naïve enough to assume that, since they'd witnessed such horrendifying displays of magic, everything else must be true. It got to the point where people went out of their way to sneak up on her with a cup of water, just to try and see if she would melt when it hit her. Somehow, Elphaba could always see it coming. It was as if she had an uncanny gift of knowing. Countless cups of water must have been dodged, and not once was she seen in the rain. It was a spell, everyone said. A spell to repel water from her repulsive body.

When my life fell apart, I found myself wishing for sorcery. I wished to magically turn back the clock and take back my poor decisions. I wished for people's memories to be erased and to start afresh. The trouble is, sorcery is limited. Sorcery – no matter how cleverly performed – cannot turn back time. It cannot wipe the memories of hundreds.

The fact is, once an action has been made, it cannot be undone, especially by the use of cheap parlour tricks.

* * *

One thing that would take me many more years to learn is that you can only ever rely on yourself. This is a fact that Elphaba knew from an early age. It was beaten into her by the hostility and ridicule that resulted from her pigmented skin. I, however, was used to being dependent. My smooth talking easily paved a pathway to favours, meaning I could offload my responsibilities onto others. What I failed to realise is that people are unreliable, all talk and no action. Anyone can say anything, but it doesn't mean they are going to do it.

And Pfannee didn't. Turns out she had her own agenda.

A Munchkin attempting to pass as a Gillikinese highbred, she was short, pretentious and gregarious. She was something of a ringleader when it came to tormenting Elphaba. Very often it was her shrieks of gleeful laughter that could be heard whenever ill fate befell the green girl. Passive but motivated, I was certain she would leap at the chance to be my accomplice.

Leap she did. A few well-placed words about how a favour from her would result in allowing her into my closest friend circle were enough to sway her into complying with my scheme. With wide-eyed elation at the thought of rising up the ranks of popularity, she gushed promises about how she would live up to my expectations. I handed her my most precious and unique pink fountain pen. It's the only one I ever wrote with, a signature so distinguished that anyone who saw the pink ink and loopy writing could be certain that the words were mine. There would be no doubt to Elphaba that I was the one who wrote this letter.

'You must not tell anyone,' I insisted, and Pfannee pinky-swore that she would keep it to herself.

* * *

The door handle finally turned, and I looked up from painting my nails to see Elphaba finally walk in. My stomach twisted in anticipation. I had placed the letter at a perfect angle on my desk for Elphaba to see it. She paused in the doorway, glanced vaguely in my direction, and then closed the door before slumping off to find some book or other.

I was fuming.

How dare she not take any notice of my efforts to demoralise her. The very least she could have done was say something about it, but instead she had gone off as though it didn't matter at all. Determined not to be defeated, I coughed.

'Something wrong, Galinda?' said Elphaba.

I didn't want to speak to her. Verbal battles against Elphaba always resulted in losses. Instead I offered my best glare.

Elphaba rolled her eyes.

'Nice to see you care so much that you can't stop staring at me,' she quipped, and my resolve broke.

'I would _never_ stare at you!'

'How strange. I could have sworn that those two wide, unblinking eyes of yours were glowering in my direction. Their prettiness is ruined by such ugly emotions.'

'At least I'll never be as ugly as you.'

'At least my ugliness is only on the outside, whereas yours comes from within.'

'How dare you.'

Elphaba cackled. 'Well what do you expect from a callous green bean?'

And then, she opened her book and her attention was lost.

* * *

All around me, I heard the scratches of pens. The room was boiling. Morrible always magicked the rooms hot in the middle of winter, but a lot of the time, they were too hot. It didn't help that the winter sun was glaring straight at my eyes through the window, partially blocking my vision and causing me to squint.

In front of me, Elphaba had already filled half a page, even with such tiny handwriting. Even Pfannee had managed a couple of sentences, but I felt stuck and had a slight headache coming on. The essay question was long and wordy, and I only had sparse recollections of the information needed to answer it.

I decided that, at the very least, I ought to look as though I was doing something, so I reached into my handbag, only to find my pink fountain pen missing. Well that was that, then, another wasted hour in a stuffy classroom. Only now did I remember that Pfannee had yet to return the pen to me. Glancing over, I noted, irritably, that Pfannee was using the pen herself, wasting all my precious pink ink on her horrible essay. So much for allowing her into my close friend circle.

Closing my eyes, I allowed my forehead to be warmed by the sunshine. Suddenly it was summer, and I was sitting outside on the terrace at my home in Frottica, with a jug of lemonade and a few close friends for company. We sat beneath a parasol discussing our dreams for the future, in days long before the idea of wealthy husbands was forced on us.

When I was a child, I used to dream of being an artist, but no one tended to pay attention whenever I drew anything. 'That's a nice building you drew, Galinda, now put down your pencils and go socialise with the other girls.' Eventually, my enjoyment of art gave way to the need to form and retain friendships, leaving me with little time to pursue it. At the time, I didn't care, but would, many years later, come to regret it.

The faces of those girls I used to socialise with had long faded into indefinable blurs; they were all the same, really, and there was not one girl I was close enough to care to remember. It was the same at Shiz – all of those wealthy, classy society females flitted around me, and yet not one of them stood out as anything special. I thought that I was popular, but it would take me years to realise that one's popularity is not defined by the number of shallow acquaintances one has, but by the real, precious few who stick around through everything.

There was, in fact, one girl who stood out from the crowd at Shiz, but I was in such a state of denial that I failed to realise she was right under my nose the whole time. A lesson that I had yet to learn was that hatred and love are often the same thing, it's just that hatred is also a disguise of a love not accepted.

I spent the hour staring at the back of Elphaba's infuriatingly shiny head, wanting nothing more than to tear off those long, straight locks that could almost be considered beautiful when her green skin was out of sight.

* * *

The day everything changed was like an outbreak of hives. It began with that itch that you firstly try to ignore, until eventually you cannot ignore it and finally look and discover that it's all over your body.

When the whispers started, I refused to believe they could possibly be about me. In the running of the gossip vine, I was normally an instigator, not a receiver. The students looked to me to keep them informed of the goings-on of the university. As such, it was odd that, for the first time in history (History meaning the whole first term of uni), a rumour had sparked from a source I was unaware of.

The first time I heard my name in such a context, I thought I heard wrong. I was – surely – not the _subject_ of this rumour, but perhaps a victim of it? At any rate, someone seemed to have gotten the wrong end of the stick. It was one of those dreadful exaggerations that caused me to want to bang my head against a wall. Two guys taking a scrap of information and making mountains out of it. It was so funny that I struggled to keep a straight face as I walked on by.

Their allegation: Apparently I was in love with Elphaba.

Me. The girl who led every movement against her. The girl who called her names, churned out vegetable jokes and complained about not getting a private suite or sorcery lessons. In love. With _Elphaba._

Seriously.

I brushed it off with a bright smile and quick toss of the hair. In a mere matter of hours it would be those two idiots who became subject to speculation. I could easily spin the tale so that I was the victim. 'Did you hear about those losers saying all that stuff about Galinda? How dare they insult her in such a way!' everyone would say. Better yet, it wouldn't be so hard to imply that Elphaba was the one who was in love with me. After all, at least the entire male half of the student body was. Smirking, I continued to my class.

When I arrived it was to shrieks and peals of laughter. Thoroughly baffled, I slid into my seat and looked around. The students were huddled around one desk in the front and centre of the room…Elphaba's desk. I wondered what sort of affair was going down. Among the peals of laughter I heard a particularly high pitched shriek of glee. Pfannee stood at the head of the crowd; clearly she was in charge of all this. She caught my eyes, and a wicked grin spread across her face.

'And look everyone, here she is, the culprit of our latest scandal, Galinda Upland!'

The laughter ceased immediately. My stomach dropped. Heads turned, and pairs of eyes stared. From the middle of it all, Elphaba rose, her shoulders hunched, her arms pinned to her sides, and as she did so, the tables around her trembled. Slowly, she twisted herself around to face me, and her eyes flashed dangerously through her glasses. In her hand, she held a sheet of paper, and I recoiled in horror as I caught sight of pink, loopy writing.

'Galinda Upland,' she seethed. 'How in Lurline's name could you do this to me?'

I rose from my seat. I could feel all eyes on me as I slowly made my way towards her and snatched the paper out of her hand. Glancing over it, my brow furrowed as I tried to make sense of the words that swam before me. At first, I thought it was the letter to my parents, but as I studied it more, I started to notice that the letters didn't make sense; they spelled out words that were far different to what I recalled.

Words that didn't belong to me.

Before I could react, Pfannee snatched the paper away.

'Let it be known exactly what it is that Galinda wrote in her oh-so-romantic love letter to the Artichoke,' she announced. 'Dearest, darlingest Elphie,' she sang, 'I know that I've been a bitch to you in the past, but I couldn't contain myself anymore, and simply had to tell you how in love with you I am. I secretly have a thing for ugly green things and every night I dream about kissing you and making love to you. I hope you understand and are able to return my feelings. With love and kisses, Galinda Upland (of the Upper Uplands).'

The students started howling again. I was frozen on the spot, unable to comprehend what just happened, let alone react. Pfannee's face swam before my vision; she threw her head back with merciless laughter, and the crowds of students swarmed around, latching onto the hilarity of the situation. Elphaba stared at me, and I shook my head in disbelief.

 _'I didn't write it!'_ I screamed. 'You took my pen and wrote it yourself!'

Pfannee shook her head. 'But Galinda, is that not your pink fountain pen over there, on your desk?'

I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, there was my pen, back on my desk as she said.

'I didn't write it,' I choked out feebly, but the amount of uproar in the room drowned out my words.


End file.
